In May 2005, an Armenian-Chechen came pretty close to blowing George W Bush to smithereens while the US President was visiting the former Soviet State of Georgia. Originally brushed aside as more of a protest than an attempted assassination, the truth was far different - Bush was in fact but a whisker away from death and the ensuing FBI-led investigation had more drama and twists and turns than a series of 24.

For once, no expense was spared. By May 10, 2005, Tibilisi, the capital of the former Soviet State of Georgia, had undergone a magical make-over. Buildings along the ‘Bush Route’ and other major thoroughfares received a long-awaited coat of pastel paint. Streets were re-paved and patched up at a cost of £3 million. The government forced the aged Enguri hydroelectric plant to keep chugging along despite repeated demands from its overworked engineers for it to be shut down for urgent repairs. Repair work would have closed the plant for three months; nobody in government wanted to be responsible for sending the country into darkness while the President of the United States was visiting.

Georgia had been a model democracy since the ‘Rose Revolution’ of 2003, when the people peacefully ousted their corrupt Moscow-backed President. US-trained lawyer Mikhail Saakashvili, 37, had been elected as the Georgian President in January 2004 in the country’s first democratic elections. Since then, Georgia and the United States had developed a ‘special friendship’.

At the 10.30am press conference given the day after Bush touched down in Tibilisi, the US President told Saakashvili that he had “a solid friend in America” (a sentiment which Bush knew would annoy Putin, who was uneasy about the US securing closer ties with a pro-western government on Russia's border). The US President also thanked the Georgian people for the contribution of nearly 1,000 troops to the war in Iraq (part of a deal with the US in return for weapons and military training).Three questions were then allowed from the local and White House press, which Bush answered by repeating the key-words of the trip: “Freedom” and "Democracy”.

Meanwhile, in a shed in Vashlijvari, a suburb of Tibilisi, a 27-year-old assassin had decided that May 10 was the day that the President of the United States would die. Vladimir Arutyunian’s shed contained an impressive arsenal. It was home to a fully-equipped chemical laboratory, dozens of grenades, plastic explosives, detonators, twenty litres of sulphuric acid, piles and piles of mercury thermometers, military manuals, an electronic listening device and a well-thumbed Russian translation of the assassination classic, The Day of the Jackal.

As far as his neighbours knew, Vladimir was an oddball loner who lived with his mother, Anzhela, a former French teacher, in the suburbs of Tbilisi. They apparently survived, but only just, on Anzhela’s meagre earnings from selling napkins at the local market. Vladimir didn’t speak to his neighbours, had no friends but spent a lot of time away from home. When he was home, he spent nearly all of his time in his shed or in the nearby woods.

Vladimir, a native Armenian, had lost his father and older brother in Armenia’s conflict with Azerbaijan in 1991. They were both executed by firing squad for participating in terrorist activities when Vladimir was eleven. In fear of their lives, his mother, Angela, gave up her teaching job and travelled with her son to Georgia where they arrived as refugees. Vladimir wanted to assassinate Bush for a number of reasons but in particular because the US President was trying to forge an alliance with Azerbaijan, the country responsible for his father’s and brother’s execution.

Vladimir selected a Russian-made RDG-5 hand grenade, wrapped it in a tartan cloth and tucked it under his leather jacket. Filled with steel fragments, the lethal device, with an optimum killing range of 15-20 metres, was in perfect working order.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people were flocking to Freedom Square to hear the President of the United States address the nation – and to see rock bands perform on a huge stage. The atmosphere was picnic-like. T-shirts displayed logos of the Chicago Bulls, Texas Longhorns and Bruce Springsteen; a seemingly infinite number of paper flags featuring the stars and stripes waved; school children carried placards they made in class; ‘Georgia Welcomes USA’ and ‘We love USA’.

A long plexi-glass barrier blocked the entrance to Freedom Square on Rustaveli Avenue. Georgian security guards and American Secret Service agents were stationed at five openings, where they frisked and checked for weapons with airport-style metal-detectors. The Secret Service agents were extreme in their precautions. At the security gate for the press core, an agent pulled an apple from the bag of a Georgian photographer.

“Hey!” he shouted to a colleague, “we let apples in? No?”

“Sorry man,” he told the photographer with a grin. “No apples. You might throw it at the President. I'm not saying you might, but you could.”

But it appeared nobody had informed the Secret Service that Georgians cannot wait in an orderly manner. As thousands of excited and impatient music fans began to push, people were pressed against the plexi-glass; the good-spirited crowd threatened to turn into an angry mob. As the muffled screams of squashed civilians mingled with angry chanting from frustrated sections of the crowd; faced with a potential disaster, the security guards had no choice but to remove the barricades to prevent a riot.

The American counter-terrorist snipers hidden on Tbilisi’s roofs were warned to be on high alert as thousands of unsearched people poured into Freedom Square. Among them, dressed in a thick leather coat with a fur collar, was Vladimir Arutyunian.

The Secret Service would have liked to, but hadn’t managed to line the entire stage with bullet-resistant glass; there was a twelve-foot gap near the lectern where Bush was to give his speech. Vladimir worked his way through the dancing, good-humoured crowd towards the gap.

The Presidential limousine arrived five minutes early. The Bushes waved as they walked onstage. They were greeted by tens of thousands of cheering Georgians and a recording of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ played at full volume. A power-cut cut short the Georgian National Anthem ‘Freedom’ but the good-humoured crowd unharmoniously finished the song anyway.

By now the assassin was soaked in sweat. Vladimir had stood for hours in the hot sun, wearing a heavy leather coat that concealed his hand grenade, muttering and cursing to himself, as he tried to keep his balance in the packed crowd. As he fought to get close to the stage, the crowd tightened until he was pressed into a wall of people singing ‘Freedom’ at the top of their voices.

Bush began his speech at exactly 1.30pm. “Citizens of a free Georgia, Laura and I were in the neighbourhood - we thought we'd swing by and say gamarjoba.” The crowd cheered. “I am proud to stand beside a President who has shown such spirit, determination, and leadership in the cause of freedom. And Laura and I are proud to stand with the courageous people of Georgia, in this place that has earned a proud name - Freedom Square.” The crowd erupted.

The assassin pulled the pin and threw the grenade, still wrapped in the tartan cloth, at the US President.

Georgian security man, Davit Nadibaidze, was stationed directly in front of the two Presidents. He watched the grenade bounce off the head of a small child who was sat on the shoulders of her father in the front row and roll to a stop at his feet. It was exactly 18.6 metres from the Presidents; within its optimum killing range.

Nadibaidze, who, as a young soldier, had been wounded by a grenade in Georgia’s civil war, instantly recognised the device and scooped it up. He knew the fuse would burn for a maximum of five seconds before it exploded. He had maybe two seconds to get the grenade away from the Presidents. He vaulted the security barrier and bolted behind the stage, clutching the grenade to his stomach while Bush continued his speech.

The explosion never came. When Vladimir had pulled the pin, the tartan cloth had become caught in the firing mechanism, slowing it down so that it failed to strike the fuse hard enough to ignite it. It had been an extraordinarily close call.

The Georgian authorities decided to postpone informing the Secret Service what had happened until Bush had left Georgia – an extraordinary decision considering the assassin remained loose for the rest of Bush’s visit. As soon as Special Agent Bryan Paarmann, the FBI's legal attaché at the US Embassy in Tbilisi, found out, he alerted the FBI’s offices in the Ukraine and Turkey, quickly assembled a team of FBI agents from Budapest and Paris and scrambled a specialist forensic field-team from Washington DC. Paarmann passed the information to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, who immediately briefed a shocked President Bush.

A reward of 20,000 laris (£8,000) was offered in exchange for information leading to the capture of the assassin. A public appeal was made for photographs and video footage. The forensic agents analysed the grenade, mapped the crime scene, and then, using a portable lab that they had flown in from the USA, they obtained a DNA sample from the handkerchief, which provided a genetic profile of the attacker.

The agents studied countless photos and hours of news footage and interviewed dozens of possible witnesses. In one picture, they spotted a man with a large camera facing the area of the attack. They eventually found him. Ed McLuskie was a visiting American professor who had since returned to the USA. Agents were able to identify a suspect from the professor's photographs. On July 17 Georgia’s Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili passed the photos onto the press and announced a reward of £60,000 for information leading his capture. Two days later they got a call.

The following night, July 20, a crack-team of Georgian security agents led by Colonel Zurab Kvlividze, 37, head of the Anti-Terrorist Department of the Interior Ministry, staked out Vladimir’s apartment. A few hours later, a young bearded man carrying a backpack and dressed in an army uniform, approached the building. The FBI agents watched as three heavily-armed Georgians in plain clothes, led by Zurab, discretely followed him.

As Vladimir reached the door to the apartment block, Zurab called out to him but the assassin carried on towards his building. As the colonel and his team jogged forward to make the arrest Vladimir suddenly turned round. In his hands was a submachine gun. Zurab, wanting him alive, shot Vladimir in the leg and the assassin fell to the ground; Zurab shouted at Vladimir to place his hands behind his head. The assassin raised his left hand to his head, his right hand covering his leg-wound. As Kylividze moved forward, Arutyunian’s right hand came up holding the submachine gun. He opened fire, riddling Zurab’s body with bullets; the head of the Anti-Terrorist Department fell, mortally wounded, onto the stone floor. The two support officers returned fire and hit Vladimir in the shoulder and chest; despite this, Vladimir managed to retreat into the building firing rapidly as he went, forcing the officers to leap for cover. The observing FBI officers couldn’t believe it – the assassin was getting away.

By now television news teams had arrived and the next part of the operation was played out live on local TV. A specialist Georgian commando team entered the block and slowly climbed the stairs to Vladimir’s fourth floor apartment. In the darkness, none of the men noticed the tripwire until it was too late. A commando caught the glint of the wire as it snapped and shouted a warning - they fled back down the stairs, expecting an explosion – but nothing came. Instead, the tripwire was connected to a simple device that triggered a light and buzzer inside Vladimir’s apartment, warning him of any approach to his door. By the time the commando team had regrouped the wounded Vladimir had escaped via a rear exit into nearby woods with his rucksack.

Vladimir was heading for a secret underground bunker, a relic from the Second World War. It was equipped for a nuclear emergency with food supplies and - a lot more weapons. Fortunately, the Georgian commandos soon overtook the wounded Vladimir and, realising he wouldn’t survive the night without medical treatment, he quickly surrendered.

DNA samples from Vladimir matched the handkerchief and, from his hospital bed, Vladimir confessed that he had thrown the grenade, adding he would do it again if he had the chance. But he refused to say why he did it. Investigators concluded that Vladimir had acted alone. He was charged with terrorism, attempted murder and premeditated murder. During his trial, he retracted his confession and turned up in court with his lips sewn shut in protest at what he called the violation of his human rights. On January 12, 2006, Vladimir was sentenced to life. As he was led from court, he was asked by one journalist if he was a terrorist. “I don't consider myself a terrorist, I'm just a human being,” he replied. He also announced he intended to appeal but as far as the American and Georgian authorities were concerned, the case was closed.

Well, not quite. How could the poor son of a napkin saleswoman fill an underground bunker and a garden shed with a weapons arsenal? Vladimir was not acting alone. And Georgia wasn’t the peaceful democracy that Bush wanted it to be. The breakaway Georgian Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia had been violently resisting Tbilisi’s efforts to re-integrate them into Georgia for over a decade. Starting in June 2004, Georgian armed forces attempted to clamp down on drug smugglers operating in the 3,900 square kilometre lawless region of South Ossetia. Hostage takings, shootouts and occasional bombings left dozens dead and wounded. The operation was a failure.

Much worse though, is Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, close to the border with Russia, a river valley about 34 km long. It serves as the base for a wide variety terrorist groups, including the Chechen rebels responsible for the Beslan school massacre. Most shockingly of all, the Pankisi Gorge has, according to the United States, played host to several high-ranking members of al Qaeda. In February 2002, the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that an unnamed detainee who belonged to an al Qaeda cell had broken under CIA interrogation (later revealed to be senior al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah) and named the network’s European command.

Zubaydah identified the infamous Fedel Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a 39-year-old Jordanian, as the European chief of operations and Abu Atiya (a 34-year-old Jordanian relative of al-Zarqawi and fluent in Russian and Turkish) as the leader of the ‘Pankisi cell’. According to Powell, this man “tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks.” This included the attempted ricin attack in London, foiled in 2003.

In January 2003, Atiya was captured in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku and was interviewed by anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere who was investigating international recruiting networks for Chechen rebels. Atiya boasted that while in Pankisi in 2002, he had acquired two SAM-18 surface-to-air missiles from the Chechen guerrilla, Rouslan Guelaiev, number three on Russia’s most-wanted list (the two men were practically neighbours, their hide-outs were only a few miles from each other). The missiles were smuggled from Georgia through Turkey and into Europe where they were to be used on civilian jets. The judge had good reason to take Atiya seriously. In 2002 two SAM-7 missiles were fired at a Boeing belonging to an Israeli airline as it took off from Mombasa, Kenya. They missed. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility. Bruguiere immediately informed the Americans. A massive operation was launched to track down the SAMs and on February 11, 2003, 450 troops and several light tanks were suddenly scrambled to London’s Heathrow airport, which had been put on red alert based on information arising from the search. Although this action may well have prevented an attack, both the missiles and the people that smuggled them remain at large. 

In January 2005, members of Russia’s counter-terrorist unit covertly swept the Pankisi gorge. They found 200 Chechen rebel fighters based in the villages of Duisi and Khalatsani and another 50 based in the northern village of Omalo. Then, most worryingly, they found a third group 30-strong group of militants, consisting mainly of foreign mercenaries, near the village of Birkiani. Among them, using sophisticated surveillance equipment, they identified al Qaeda leaders Abu Hafs al-Rudani (who commanded 80 mercenaries and who fought alongside Guelaiev), Abu Rabiya and Abu Atiya.

Also among the Chechens in the Pankisi gorge was Vladimir Arutyunian. His mother told journalists that as Vladimir grew up he longed to emulate his father and regularly travelled the short distance to the Pankisi Gorge, adding that he went there on May 7, 2005. The Chechen rebels were at the time led by Rouslan Guelaiev (killed by a sniper in 2004 after the American-trained Georgian army tracked his mobile phone) and Brigadier General Rizvan Chitigov. Chitigov told Vladimir he was planning to use two kilograms of mercury to poison a Russian water works and Vladimir started collecting mercury thermometers. Chitigov also asked Vladimir to store bomb-making equipment in the Georgian capital in preparation for a possible terrorist attack.

On March 24, 2005, Chitigov was shot dead in Chechnya in a short gunfight with Russian Special Forces. After Chitigov’s death, the Chechen rebels in Pankisi, now being tracked by the Georgians, Americans and Russians, went to ground. Vladimir returned to Tbilisi until May, when he learnt of Bush’s visit and travelled to the Pankisi Gorge in an effort to help and weapons. Unable to find the Chechen rebels, Vladimir headed for Birkiani where he stumbled across Abu Hafs and Abu Rabiya who gladly supplied Vladimir with the grenades he needed.

The full story was played down with good reason. At the time of Bush’s visit, Georgia was supposed to be a safe democracy and America’s friend – the fact that an assassin living in Georgia was supplied with chemical and small arms weapons by high-ranking al Qaeda operatives based less than a hundred miles from the capital did not sit well with this image. Today, Abu Hafs is still operating in the Caucasus where there are plenty more men like Vladimir Arutyunian ready to strike as soon as another opportunity presents itself.